While doing his M.Phil, he started teaching literature, first as guest and then as full-time faculty, at various degree colleges in Bengal. He taught for three years.

The next phase of his professional life was spent in cultural journalism, part of editorial teams of several daily newspapers, including the DNA, Bombay and Hindustan Times, Delhi. He contributed editorials, comment-pieces, feature-articles, book and film reviews for a variety of publications. He returned to teaching full-time in 2011 when he joined Ambedkar University, Delhi as Assistant Professor of English in the School of Liberal Studies. His faculty has since moved to the School of Letters. His interests are in urban visual culture in modern Europe and South Asia, global Modernisms, contemporary European fiction, Adaptation Studies, modern Bengali literature & cinema, Marxist and Post-Marxist thought; and environmental humanities. He is currently PhD Fellow, Department of Film studies, Jadavpur University, Calcutta. The working title of his thesis is Visualising the City: Photography, Modernity and Calcutta (1860-1960).

Past Employment

Mr Chowdhury taught at Presidency College (which is now a University, Calcutta), Haldia Govt College, W Bengal and Charuchandra College, Calcutta. He was also a senior member of the Features Team at The Bengal Post, Calcutta, Hindustan Times (HT) Delhi and Daily News and Analysis (DNA), Bombay among others. Since August 2011, he is at AUD.

The Indian Partition and the Making of New Scopic Regime in Bengali Cinema.European Journal of English Studies. [Spl Issue Poetics and Partition]. 19.3. pp 255-270. Routledge/Taylor & Francis. ISSN 1382-5577. Print Journal.

Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation, Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memoirs of a City, Milan Kundera’s The Curtain, Dominique Lapierre’s Once Upon A Time In The Soviet Union, Paul Theroux’s The Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta, Sunil Gangopadhyay’s The Fakir, Chidananda Dasgupta’s Seeing is Believing: Selected Writings on Cinema.

Opinion Page Articles (a selection)

Business Standard

Finding Forever, Opinion Page, June 09, 2017. [Article can be accessed at http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/finding-forever-117060901477_1.html

Being Human is so Yesterday, Opinion Page, April 8, 2017. [Article can be accessed at http://www.business-standard.com/author/search/keyword/sayandeb-chowdhury

The More things remain the same, Edit page, April 5, 2016. [Article can be accessed at http://indianexpress.com/arte icle/elections-2016/opinion/columns/west-bengal-elections-2016-cpim-trinamool-congress-mamata-banerjee-bjp-the-more-things-remain-the-same/]

Daily O

Durga Pujo was never overtly religious. Outrage over Jawed Habib ad is misplaced. September 08, 2017. [Article can be accessed at http://www.dailyo.in/politics/jawed-habib-advert-bjp-taliban-durga-pujo-bhakts/story/1/19400.html]

National Herald

The political economy of deceit, September 01, 2017. [Article can be accessed at https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/opinion/the-political-economy-of-deceit]

The Wire

Why Is the BJP Communalising West Bengal Instead of Offering It Good Governance? Published Online July 6, 2017. The article can be found https://thewire.in/154936/bjp-west-bengal-communalisation/

Features and Long-Form

The Wire

Stardust Memories: The Cosmopolitanism of Uttam Kumar and His Era-Defining Cinema. Published online July 24, 2017. https://thewire.in/160051/uttam-kumar-bengali-cinema/

Bengali Cinema is Moribund and Smug in its Comfort Zone, published online June 25, 2016. http://thewire.in/45861/bengali-cinema-is-moribund-and-smug-in-its-comfort-zone-2/

Caravan Magazine

The Man Who Would Be King [on life and cinema of Bengali actor Soumitra Chatterjee] 7/2012; p 100-105

Power to the Bourgeoisie: How the Left left Bengali Cinema, 12/2011; p 20-21

Red Requiems: Three Movies that Examine Communism in a Revisionist Light, 10/2009;p 74-79

Postal-Failure: Why Indian Indie Favourite Aparna Sen’s The Japanese Wife Disappoints, [published online May 19, 2010] The essay can be accessed at http://www.themovingarts.com/postal-failure-aparna-sens-the-japanese-wife-disappoints/

Presented the paper A Bridge on River Hugli: Visualities, Regimes, Practices at the International seminar Entering the city: Spaces, transports, perceptions, and representations from the 18th century to the present. Brussels, 15 & 16 October, 2015. Conference hosted by MICM-ARC Research Project & Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. [Sponsored participant]

Selected for Participation at the London Critical Theory Summer School at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, from July 1-July 12th, 2013.

Presented the paper The Making of Calcutta as a Cinematic City at the Screen International Conference ‘Cosmopolitan Screens’. Organised by OUP journal Screen and Glasgow University, Glasgow, Scotland, 28-30th June, 2013.

Presented the paper Reasons of the State: Communist Politics and Open Society in Bengal at the International Society for Intellectual History Seminar Use and Abuse of Reason, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, 27-31st July, 2004. [Sponsored participant]

Presented the paper Battala Literature and the History of its Production at the International Book History Seminar, Department of English, Jadavpur University, 2004.

Presented the paper Why Aren’t there no Women in Feluda at the International Seminar Children’s Literature at Jadavpur University, Calcutta, 11-13th December, 2003.

Presented the paper The Cultural Politics of Battala and the Re-interrogation of Postcolonial Peripheries at the Cultural Studies Workshop, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta & ENRECA Danida & SEPHIS, Shantiniketan, 25–31 January, 2002.

Presented the paper The disparate signifiers of the Body in Coleridge’s Divine Comedy at the International Seminar Rethinking Romanticism, Department of English, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, February 8-9, 2001.

Professionl Activities/Awards

Fellowships

Mr Chowdhury was Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow to UK in 2016.

He was Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA) Research Fellow at the International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS), University of Leiden, the Netherlands from April-July, 2015.

He was University Research Fellow (URF) at the Department of English, Jadavpur University, Calcutta between January and November 2001.

Current Research Interests

Bringing his long interest in the processes of canonization and iconization in popular culture, Mr Chowdhury is finishing a work on the life, cinema and afterlife of Bengali actor Uttam Kumar. This work, which tries to connect star studies, postcolonial cinema, popular cinema and cultural studies, is being written for a readership that goes beyond the domain of academia. HarperCollins India will publish the book in 2018.

His academic research has two parts. Part one looks at cultures and spaces of modernity, especially those that arise of the encounter between various visualities on one side- like photography and cinema - and between narrative literature and fiction on the other. Drawing from the first, the second part of his research enquires into the idea of the Modernist-postcolonial City as a cultural and architectural site of encounter, memory-making, visual meaning-making and cultural production.

I also have interests in post-Marxism, adaptation studies and translation, animal studies and ecological humanities, some of which I would want to pursue in future.